AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He shows me how to sauté the green pepper, onion, garlic, and tomatoes for the base of the sauce and mix oil and vinegar for salad dressing.
Rex nudges me with his shoulder, teasing me about being distractible. Apparently, I missed whatever he just said because I was watching him bend over to take the bread out of the oven. Rex’s teasing is always gentle, which makes it feel like a whole different animal than my brothers’ take-no-prisoners brand of humiliation.
“How are you feeling?” I ask him as we sit down to eat.
“I feel pretty damn good,” he says, looking at me. I meant his head, but I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about. I smile at him, but now that I’m not distracted by cooking, my mind is racing with questions. Should I tell him about Jay asking me out, or will that just give him more of a reason to be jealous? Should I tell him about Richard? Ginger said that’s what you do when you… date someone. Is that what we’re doing?
I shove spaghetti into my mouth until I can decide, but when I look up, Rex is looking at me, but isn’t eating.
“’S good,” I say with my mouth full.
“Something wrong?” Rex asks.
“No, I just. I was thinking, when I was in Detroit, that….” That what? That I should tell him what happened the last time I thought I was dating someone? That I should tell him how pathetic I am? Ugh.
“So, the main character in my favorite book is named Richard,” I say.
“The Secret History?” Rex asks.
“Yeah! How’d you—oh.” Right, the book had fallen out of my pants the night we fucked against the tree. “But how’d you know it was my favorite?”
“It was worn,” he says. “And most of your other books looked like you bought them used, but not like they’d been read that many times. The Secret History had its corners all rounded, like it’d been handled a lot.”
Jesus Christ, he’s observant.
“Well, so, when I was in grad school, I met this guy and—this is so stupid—his name was Richard. And I had this idiotic thought that maybe he’d be like Richard in the book.” I trail off, embarrassed that I admitted this.
“It’s not stupid,” he says, taking my hand. “It’s actually incredibly sweet.”
“It’s nerdy,” I say.
“Yeah, maybe a little. And… he wasn’t?”
“Ah, no.”
Rex nods and starts to eat slowly, as I talk. I tell him about meeting Richard and about how things were between us. Rex keeps eating, but his left hand is clenched into a fist where it rests on his knee, and he keeps squeezing it tighter and tighter every time I say something he doesn’t like. When I get to the part about Ginger overhearing Rex’s friends calling me trash, he makes a sound like a growl in the back of his throat, but stops himself from interrupting me. When I tell him about walking in on Richard kissing another man, Rex’s face falls and he grits his teeth. He looks furious.
“I would never do that to you,” Rex insists, his eyes on fire. He looks like he’s about to say something else, but I just wanted to get it off my chest. I don’t want to rehash my own pathetic history.
I push the serving bowl toward Rex.
“You should finish it. I bet you haven’t eaten much lately.”
He smiles gratefully and puts the last serving of pasta on his plate.
“Yeah, I can never eat when I have them. Poor Marilyn,” he says. “She thought I was dying or something. She kept jumping up on the bed, trying to check on me, but I couldn’t stand the movement, so I shut the door. She was whining all night, trying to get in.”
I know the sound. It was the same sound she made the night I hit her. Remembering the way she lay on the ground, so helpless, makes me shiver.
“Hey,” I say, “you never told me how you knew what to do for Marilyn.”
“What, with her leg?”
He starts to clear the plates, but I wave him off, putting a hand on his shoulder to keep him sitting. I carry the plates to the sink and start to do the dishes.
“Animals used to follow my mom home all the time,” Rex says. “There was always a dog sleeping outside our door, or some cats living under the porch. One day, I got home from school and found a turkey in our yard. Dogs were what she liked best, though, so whenever one followed her home or showed up at our door, she’d let it in and feed it. And then it’d just stay. The first one we had was Buster, like Buster Keaton. Sweet dog. Big hound. He used to sit next to my mom at the table and rest his chin on her lap. But usually, they’d live outside because we weren’t home all day. They’d come home busted up from getting in fights with other dogs, or sometimes hit by cars.”
